Hearing the message from Tehran

In dealing with Iran, support for possible military action is in the single digits (8 percent).
Public Agenda's Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index, conducted in association with Foreign Affairs Magazine

David Seaton's News Links
Depending on what they want to see, commentators are speculating on the possible meaning of the resolution of the captive British sailor crisis. Complex theories about conflict among the "hardliners" and "moderates" in Tehran abound.

People are reading the tea leaves on this too closely, I believe. It is all really very simple. What you see is what you get.

Iran has proved several things. They have proved that they could do something militarily and politically significant anytime they wanted to, they proved they could do it for as long as they wanted to and they could stop doing it at the moment of their choosing. With this simple expedient Iran dominated the world headlines and television news day after day. Plainly put, Iran changed the subject of the conversation. The question stopped being, "what will be done to Iran?" and became, "what will Iran do?". And all this was done very cheaply, if you compare it with passing UN resolutions (and enforcing them) and maintaining a huge naval force in the area. And of course:

"There's been a $5 or $6 premium that's been built into the price of oil over this," said Phil Flynn, vice president and energy analyst at Alaron Trading. "Even though this crisis has ended, the oil market is still on guard that the tensions in the Middle East are going to continue." ABC - NEWS

Another thing Iran did was to test the reaction of Western public opinion to possible armed conflict with Iran... It was extremely tepid. As we can see from the poll quoted at the top less than 10% of the American public is behind military action. Among the allies 0.0%. The only people still hot to trot are some right wing Israelis... who knows, that might be enough to get a war started, but not to finish it.

And as we can see we can see from the "Condi and Nancy Show", American diplomacy in the Middle East, like the US Army is a broken toy. Iran is playing with the disintegration of America's position in the Middle East. "Hard" is really not the same as "complicated". DS

Uncle Hamas Cares for Palestinians - Der Spiegel

David Seaton's News Links

When you read an article like this one about Hamas in the above suspicion, German news magazine of reference, Der Spiegel, you realize that Bush, Blair, the "moderate" Arabs and the Israelis are in plain speech just "pissing into the wind". Simply put, faith and sacrifice on this level cannot be defeated by anything but prosperity and easy money. Certainly killing and starving people of this rectitude and courage will only make them stronger and braver in their faith. I think that as soon as the US fails in Iraq, and that will be soon enough, the Islamists will sweep all before them in the Middle East like a wind. Then we will see how long this probity lasts, when the faithful finally get all that oil money to spend. DS
Abstract: At first glance Hamas, a party that looks after the poor with its money and charity, appears to be playing a well-known tune on the instrument of populism. On the other hand, every major international aid organization is singing the Islamist group's praises when it comes to the quality of its work. "In the International Crisis Group's 2003 report, the most important American NGOs gave perfect marks to Hamas's work; they couldn't have achieved a better result," says Helga Baumgarten, a lecturer at Birzeit University in Ramallah. Baumgarten believes that the success of the party, which emerged from the radical Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, is based on two factors: the highly professional work of the group's welfare agencies and Hamas's oft-cited integrity. "In fact, all studies have concluded that Hamas operates without a trace of corruption," says Baumgarten. "This has enabled it to gain the respect of the population over the years." Nevertheless, Hamas is no moderate party. It sees itself as the spearhead of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation. Following its surprising election victory in January, the organization refused to renounce armed conflict or to recognize Israel. Its repeated use of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens since its founding has also contributed to Hamas being classified as a terrorist organization in the West -- despite its day-to-day charitable activities. But it is difficult to say whether Hamas deliberately uses its charitable work to generate sympathy within the population. "Social commitment is not a means to an end; I would not interpret this merely as exploitation," says Baumgarten. And even if it were, parties the world over operate no differently.(...) At first the wheelchair-bound Yassin, who founded Hamas in 1987 and was killed in a targeted Israeli missile attack in 2004, managed the organization's funds from the living room of his modest house a few streets away. Today the center has evolved into a giant charitable institution in Gaza, operating 16 kindergartens, 30 Koran schools, and providing thousands of families with money, food and clothing. The center also pays child support for 5,000 orphans.(...) Nidal Shabana, the center's director, currently manages an annual budget of about $1 million. Despite his prominent position, Shabana remains a modest man, although a hint of pride for his work trickles through when he talks about the Islamic ping-pong team that recently won the Gaza championships under his tutelage. "Modesty and honesty are principles that are especially valued in Islam," he says. When asked his opinion about the growing strength of Islamist parties in the Arab world -- a phenomenon viewed with great concern in the West -- Shabana becomes circumspect. The behavior of Islamic leaders happens to be exemplary, he says, adding that their hands are clean. In a roundabout way, Shabana is saying that he considers the political leaders in neighboring Arab states to be corrupt and morally weak. Since the 1970s, the failure of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world -- dominated by ruling families intent on lining their own pocketbooks and bloated, inefficient bureaucracies -- has led to Islamist groups filling a social and political vacuum in the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. The fact that Hamas hasn't received recognition as the sole governing party in the Palestinian Territories is by no means just a local quirk. Resistance to Hezbollah's quest for power up the road in Beirut is similar. These religious fundamentalist organizations are a threat to the region's established regimes; it's not just Israel and its Western allies that are interested in keeping the Islamists in check. READ IT ALL

Middle East: getting worse and just beginning

David Seaton's News Links

Tony Blair is making his umpteenth trip to the Middle East, joining this endless stream of "leaders" who appear deus ex machina to be photographed shaking hands with the local "leaders" and recorded making encouraging noises. It reminds me of hospital visits to a dying relative who keeps getting thinner and thinner, while everyone gets more and more cheerful and 'positive'. It might be better if all these "leaders" were silent for awhile and everyone meditated on the size and intractable complexity of the tragedy that has been set in motion. The only way this universal pustulence, born in cupidity and greed, will ever begin to heal is if the United States and the former colonial powers, France, Turkey and Britain, all begin by admitting their failure and assume their responsibility for it... Confession, penitence and restitution. DS
Ending illusions - Leader - Guardian
Abstract: It speaks volumes about the dire state of the Middle East that a foreign head of government visiting Iraq dare not stray beyond the heavily fortified "green zone" in central Baghdad and that the entire Gaza Strip - the centre of the region's latest escalating crisis - is now strictly out of bounds on security grounds. Tony Blair's pledge that British troops will stay in Iraq "until the job is done" had an unreal air as he stood by Nuri al-Maliki yesterday with the disastrous mayhem of daily life - mass kidnappings, bombings and shootings - continuing unabated, with "terrorists fighting democracy" in Mr Blair's words. Flying on to Jerusalem, the prime minister took with him another unshakeable belief - that he can help find a way out of the deadly impasse in which Palestinians and Israelis are so dangerously trapped. Mr Blair is right to want to help. The world's most intractable conflict is too volatile to be left alone even if few Arabs believe he is qualified to act as an honest broker. Not only is he George Bush's sole significant ally in Iraq but he also delayed attempts to secure a ceasefire as Israel went on the offensive in Lebanon during the summer war against Hizbullah. The phrase "perfidious Albion" may have gone out of fashion, but the sentiment is alive and well. And the phrase "kick-start" beloved of Whitehall briefings about reviving the peace process seems spectacularly inappropriate - in the sense that kicking a corpse can achieve little. READ IT ALL

Iraq invasion 'disaster', Blair tells al-Jazeera - The Irish Times

David Seaton's News Links
Cherie Blair is Catholic and it is rumored that Tony Blair is a crypto-Catholic; and also that he is close to the Opus Dei. If this were true than his "confession" to Sir David Frost might be the beginning of a process. If he admits that Iraq was a disaster, he might admit that he had something to do with it. If he admits that, he might, if he has even a shred of decency, feel sorry for having caused so much harm. That in Catholic terminology leads to what is called "contrition", the first step in a process leading to "absloution". For those of you unfamiliar with Catholicism, I'll bring you up to speed with some quotes, (which I have taken the liberty of underlining) from the Catechism.

• "Contrition is "sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again."
• "All mortal sins of which penitents after a diligent self-examination are conscious must be recounted by them in confession, even if they are most secret and have been committed against the last two precepts of the Decalogue; for these sins sometimes wound the soul more grievously and are more dangerous than those which are committed openly."
• "Many sins wrong our neighbor. But sin also injures and weakens the sinner himself, as well as his relationships with God and neighbor. Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. One must do what is possible in order to repair the harm (e.g., return stolen goods, restore the reputation of someone slandered, pay compensation for injuries). Simple justice requires as much.Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must "make satisfaction for" or "expiate" his sins. This satisfaction is also called "penance."

There you are Tony, better get on with it, no backsliding, there is no time to lose! DS
*Below you'll find Tony's confession.

*Tony Blair has apparently admitted that the invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain was a disaster. The Prime Minister gave the frank assessment of his decision to go to war in an interview with Sir David Frost on al-Jazeera's new English-language channel. Opposition MPs seized on the comment as evidence that Mr Blair has finally accepted that his strategy in the Middle Eastern state had failed. (...) During the interview, Sir David suggested that the West's intervention in Iraq had "so far been pretty much of a disaster". Mr Blair replied: "It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy — al-Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other — to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war." READ IT ALL

Tony Blair and Iraq - William Pfaff

David Seaton's News Links
How Bush got into Iraq is complicated, but we are beginning to have some picture. Ignorance plays a large role in all the hypothesis advanced. In the USA very few people have much of an idea or even care very much about the Middle East, except for the Zionists. Those few knowledgeable people who aren't Zionists are accused of being "Arabists" and generally suspected of being "antisemites", (I put antisemitism in quotes because it is getting increasingly difficult to define the term, it's used for everything from desecrating Jewish cemeteries to criticizing Ariel Sharon and Avigdor Lieberman). But Britain has no such excuse of inbred provincialism. The British actually understand something about the Middle East and the Arab world. It's a mystery why Tony Blair signed on so unquestioningly to Bush's agenda. He might have been listened to, perhaps some of the disaster might have been avoided... at least for Britain. Understanding this mystery will surely teach us much about how the world is organized. DS

Abstract: One continues to be baffled by Blair’s unwillingness, even now, with nearly eight thousand British troops in Iraq, to take an independent line that distinguishes British from American and Israeli interests, and that makes use of Britain’s very considerable expertise and long experience in Iraq and in the Middle East to establish a serious British role as confident and knowledgeable partner of Washington, with ideas of its own. The late East German spy chief Markus Wolf was quoted in one of his obituaries as contemptuously commenting on the “sketchy” knowledge possessed by CIA agents about the countries they dealt with. That certainly can be said in spades about the people in the Bush administration who have dealt so disastrously with Iraq. Fifty years ago we were still in the midst of the Suez adventure, widely said to have broken Britain’s will to independence, reducing it to permanent submission to Washington. (The specific cause, Washington’s threat to force devaluation of the pound sterling if Britain did not halt the invasion of Egypt, has recently been described by one iconoclastic economist as a great lost opportunity, since devaluation would have boosted British exports and prevented a post-Suez economic slump.) The Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Nasserite Egypt was a foolhardy anticipation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, since it too rested on the notion that overturning a single man, Colonel Gamal Abdal Nasser, could transform the region: end the crisis in French Algeria, give Israel security, and make Britain once again a Middle Eastern power. In the event, it was better for Britain that the Suez invasion failed, since an effort to re-impose foreign control over the Suez Canal in an Egypt (nominally independent since 1923) that had just seen the departure in 1954 of the last British troops, would eventually have met enormous international resistance. The Egyptian monarchy was toppled by the “Free Officers” in 1953, and the new constitution installed by Colonel Nasser, the inventor of “Arab socialism,” had made him a great regional hero. The Suez invasion would surely have ended in fiasco. Suez can be blamed on the British prime minister of the time, Anthony Eden, who believed that in Nasser he was still fighting Hitler (just as the Israelis today claim to be doing, in the person of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Hitler is no longer an historical personage but an item in the vocabulary of sterile polemics). Eden had an excuse. He was at the time already a seriously sick man, and was also a pure social product of Britain as empire, as well as of pre-war and wartime diplomacy, ill-equipped to understand populist Arab dictators. Blair has no such excuse for ignoring both expert British opinion on Iraq and common sense, so as to trail after George W. Bush, in the latter’s inadvertent and ignorant imitation of Suez, attempting to dominate the Arab Middle East by overthrowing (what was) its most prominent despot. How Bush’s America has needed a confident and self-respecting British government, one that could recognize another Suez when it saw one, and say so. The prime minister’s advice to the Baker-Hamilton Commission on Tuesday – whatever it was -- comes too late. LINK

Beyond the Pail - Steve Bell - Guardian